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  "What's the play, Liam?" Tabby asked, unwilling to swing her hammer or fire her weapon.

  "Are they hurting you?" I asked, noticing the Iskstar crystals had virtually no impact on the skin of the Popeyes.

  "Um, I guess not," she said. "Kind of pissing me off, though."

  "You will stop!" A Piscivoru voice was heard over the top of the constant battering on our suits. One by one our attackers relented, but only after significant urging by an unarmed Piscivoru.

  "Liesh?" A male Piscivoru, who looked much like Tskir, approached. He appeared older, perhaps because of his slower movements or the fact that every lizard deferred to his command to stop attacking.

  I instructed my Popeye to open and watched with some amusement as the brave Piscivoru warriors jumped back half a meter when the breastplate popped open. "I am Liam Hoffen," I said, stepping out of the suit and onto the cavern floor.

  "I am Noelisk. I speak for the remnant of the Piscivoru," he said. "I have spoken to the one called Jonathan. He says you have traveled a long way to see us. We are a simple people. What is it you wish?"

  Before I could answer the ground shook violently causing chunks of dirt and rock to fall from the ceiling. A moment later my grav-suit stiffened as the tunnel's air pressurized. Two Piscivoru collapsed in front of us and their leader, Noelisk, staggered, only to be held up by the guard next to him.

  Chapter 19

  Tight Squeeze

  "You must come. This passage is not stable," Noelisk said as the ground continued to shake.

  "What's your read, Sendrei?" I asked. I'd already acknowledged my AI's suggestion to follow the trail of sensor dots we'd sprinkled in the passageway behind us. "I'm showing complete blockage to twelve hundred meters."

  "I have the same data," he said, opening his Popeye. "There is but one answer. The Kroerak planned to bury us and we complied by walking into their trap."

  "That's crazy, they're cutting off their access to the Piscivoru," I said. A clod fell from the ceiling and ricocheted off my back.

  "We must go, Liam Hoffen," Noelisk pushed again.

  "Right," I said. "Tabby, let's go."

  "And leave the Popeyes? Are you nuts?"

  "I think it's safe to say we’re free of Kroerak for the time being." I pulled a small pack from where it was stored in my Popeye's frame. "Grab your go bag."

  "This is nuts," Tabby protested again, but she exited her Popeye with pack in hand.

  A new round of muted explosions rattled the passageway. I looked around nervously, but nothing new broke loose. I wondered what type of weapons the Kroerak were using that they could shake us so soundly, ten kilometers beneath the mountain.

  Noelisk dropped onto his arms so his body was parallel to the ground. "You must run. The passageway narrows and you are very large."

  Not exactly sure what he was asking, the three of us followed him further down the tunnel which had been cleared by Kroerak. He moved quickly and we had to jog to keep up. Oddly, half the guard split off and broke into two teams, each taking a Kroerak corpse and dragging it at a much slower pace. My curiosity was quickly sated as we came to a large pile of Kroerak parts. A group of Piscivoru were tearing limbs from the corpses, discarding the claws and pincers into the pile.

  Another hundred meters down, Noelisk stopped next to a rocky outcropping and turned, seeming to weigh a decision of some sort. The passage continued as far as I could see and my AI estimated there was another four hundred meters.

  "I take great risk in showing this to you," he said. "If it were not for your actions in the ancient city and the appearance of our elder, Tskir, I would allow you to perish in this place."

  "I don't understand," I said. "Why have you stopped?"

  Noelisk grasped the rock outcropping and crawled over its face, disappearing. Even as I watched, I could not make out what I was seeing, beyond the fact that he had crawled from view.

  "I think these guys have more tech than they're letting on," Tabby said.

  "Hold this." I gave her my pack and allowed my grav-suit to lift me to where Noelisk had disappeared. Patting with my hands, I found what my sensors could not see, a hole not much bigger around than my head. As I touched the edges, the dimensions of the hole were highlighted by my HUD.

  "That's a fricking rat hole," Tabby said. "We're not fitting in there."

  I pushed my left arm forward and closed my eyes, willing my grav-suit to nudge me into the hole. Unlike the passageway behind me, this tunnel was completely lined with rock and worn from use. For a few meters, I made progress, inching my way into the tight space. A fresh bombardment from above shook the ground and panic filled me as I tried to breath. My chest was unable to move against the rock and I was in urgent need of air. My diaphragm began to spasm uncontrollably as it tried to fill my lungs.

  "Liam?" Tabby said. "Your heart rate is spiking. Are you okay?"

  "I can't breathe," I said, barely able to speak, my vision clouding. "It's too tight."

  A tap on my helmet alerted me to Noelisk's presence. In my state, however, I didn't much care where he was and ignored him as I fought against the unyielding stone. I choked down the feeling that I might throw up and forced my face plate to retract. The stench of clay filled my nostrils and I inadvertently struck my forehead against the rock.

  "You must calm yourself," Noelisk said and I felt a small but powerful hand on my forehead, cushioning it from hitting the wall again. "The passage is wider ahead. You have a small distance to pass. I will help you."

  For some reason, I found his words calming. I willed my body to stop bucking and concentrated on sucking air slowly into my lungs, not expanding my chest as much. Seeing that I was listening, Noelisk backed up and grasped my outstretched arm, pulling. The small alien’s strength continued to surprise me. I wriggled, pushing with my toes as he dragged me forward perhaps three centimeters, but it was enough. My chest passed the most constricted part of the tunnel and I filled my lungs.

  "Hold on a second," I said as he continued to pull on me. "I just need to catch my breath."

  "Liam?" Tabby asked, her voice wrought with concern. I thumbed the quantum crystal in the ring on my finger which I knew would cause a pulse in the matching ring she wore. It was our very private way of communicating with each other.

  "I'm okay, Tabbs. I just had a moment there," I said.

  "This way," Noelisk urged. "We must keep moving."

  I chuckled. It wasn't as if I needed directions.

  It turned out that Noelisk hadn't been completely truthful when he said we didn't have far to go. Possibly his perception of distance and my own were significantly different. For six hours we crept, slid, crawled and clawed our way through the tiny, rock passage. When we got stuck, the Piscivoru would pull on us and our bodies elongated more than I thought possible. My mind often went back to Sendrei, who I knew to be significantly more muscular and just generally larger. Somehow, he maintained his calm and complained only when surprised by a few particularly sharp rocks.

  "We have arrived," Noelisk said, releasing my wrist as I fell down into a meter-high cavity. It felt like I'd arrived in a palace and I sat upright, with my back to the tunnel wall.

  "Never again," Tabby said as she emerged from the hole with the help of one of the Piscivoru guard.

  "Is this home?" A few meters ahead my HUD indicated a much larger cavern.

  "Please, your lights will frighten the people. I ask that you douse them. There is mud and material if you cannot," Noelisk said.

  Tabby and I turned off our lights and multiple sets of cobalt blue eyes shone in front of me. As my vision adjusted, faint, glowing outlines of the Piscivoru filled the room. "You glow," I observed.

  "We are of Iskstar," Noelisk said. As he spoke, I noticed the gum cartilage in his mouth also glowed, if not quite as brightly as his eyes.

  "Captain, we are pleased to learn of your arrival." Jonathan's voice filtered into my ear from the comm.

  "Jonathan, we lost contact with you," I sa
id, while watching Sendrei emerge from the tunnel. Unlike Tabby and myself, he'd stripped out of his vac-suit, and was wearing the tattered remains of a suit liner. "Where were you?"

  "We have had quite a substantial journey," he answered. "We accompanied Tskir and a female named Jaelisk through an alternate entrance. We were later joined by one called Sklisk, who we understand to be Jaelisk's mate."

  "What is this vibration?" Noelisk asked. In the very dim light I saw his half-meter-long tongue flick out and touch the side of my face. To his surprise, I recoiled.

  "Um. Well, it's a communication device. The one called Jonathan, who arrived with Jaelisk and the elder Tskir, was talking with me," I said.

  "And you speak with them?"

  I pulled at the earwig, releasing it from where it was attached along my cheekbone and inside my ear. I held the device out to the curious alien. "A piece of electronics for just that purpose," I said. "Go ahead, you can touch it. It won't hurt you."

  "You are just as Engirisk said you would be," he said. "You travel in the presence of machines and have them do work for you. Will you join us in our main chamber? We would speak with you."

  "Of course," I responded.

  We crawled slowly on hands and knees, unable to see the uneven spots in the cavern floor or the scree in our path. We entered a large room and my HUD helped map out the details, including the soaring ceiling. A wide, relatively flat surface lay ahead for twenty meters, ending in a cliff. Rays of blue light glowed from below. We had to be close to the Iskstar. The light reflected off the ceiling and made the entire chamber glow dimly. Along the walls ahead, dozens – if not hundreds – of blue eyes peered back at us as Piscivoru skittered up over the cliff edge, stopped to catch a glance of us before disappearing below the sight line of the cliff.

  Finally able to stand, I stretched, pushing blood into my extremities for the first time in a number of hours. Inspecting team bios, I noticed Sendrei's medical AI was showing three cracked ribs. "Tabbs, take care of Sendrei."

  "Copy," she answered, picking up one of our go bags from where the Piscivoru guard had dropped them.

  "What species are you?" A Piscivoru had approached and was holding an electronic pad – unexpected, to say the least. "I do not find you within our records."

  "Human. I'm Liam Hoffen," I answered. "We are not from this galaxy."

  "The people call me Engirisk," he said. "How is it that you are not of this galaxy? How would one travel such a distance?"

  I looked at the seventy-five-centimeter-tall alien with newfound respect. The idea of galactic distance wasn't unfamiliar to him. "We used the same technology the Kroerak used to come to my home world and invade it," I said.

  "And you defeated them?" he asked, incredulous.

  "Partially," I said. "There is a root grown on the planet Zuri that is poisonous to Kroerak. We filled their ships with it and they left."

  "Enough, Engirisk," Noelisk said. "These are our guests and we have been reunited with our long-lost elder, Tskir. We will rest and we will eat. There will be plenty of time for conversations. But first, we will bathe in the grotto of the Iskstar."

  "But the humans," Engirisk said. "What if the Iskstar harms them as it does Kroerak."

  "Then we will take them from this place and have nothing more to do with them."

  "That's not fair. The Iskstar is no judge of a people," Engirisk said. "We cannot allow visitors to come to harm. They fought valiantly against the Kroerak. They are powerful allies."

  I exchanged glances with Tabby and Sendrei as the guards around us shifted. Engirisk was outing Noelisk's seemingly gracious agenda as something more sinister. I thought it was a better-than-fair chance we could take the small group around us, but I had no desire to start trouble in the bowels of Picis.

  "The people will not accept an ally that is rejected by Iskstar," Noelisk said. "We saw how their machine skins were unaffected by Iskstar. Liam Hoffen, do you fear the Iskstar?"

  "I do not know much of the Iskstar," I said. "I have only seen the crystals on the end of your guard's staves and the glow of your eyes."

  "There is no mystery," an older female said, stepping from a line of older Piscivoru that had joined us, looking on quietly as Noelisk and Engirisk had talked. "Even with the dull eyes of a foreigner, you must surely be able to look upon it."

  "Show me," I said.

  "I have to protest," Engirisk said. "If harm comes to these humans, we may never be rid of the Kroo Ack. We will not survive another five hundred stans."

  I smiled, recognizing just how good a job of translating the AI did. To me it sounded like the little alien was speaking directly to me, but in reality the AI was creating a noise cancelling wave to mute his speech and in real time projecting a realistic simulation of his voice in my language.

  "It cannot hurt for them to gaze upon it," the older female pushed before Noelisk could object.

  "Jonathan, where are you?" I asked.

  "The Piscivoru have detained us," they answered. "Understandably, they do not trust our intentions."

  "What do you know of the Iskstar?"

  "We do not recognize the element," he answered. "From what we can tell, it is unique in its existence."

  "Any chance it's hard on people?"

  "There is insufficient data," he answered. "The fact that it has detrimental effect upon Kroerak is of substantial concern. I would proceed cautiously."

  The gathering of Piscivoru in the chamber had grown and I looked out across the sea of faces that were all focused on us. "Noelisk, we seek Piscivoru help. The poison we have used to destroy Kroerak is becoming less effective. Your Iskstar is the only weapon we know of that works against this enemy. If I pass your test, will you allow us to use Iskstar to fight the Kroerak?"

  "For centuries, we have fought the Kroerak," Noelisk answered. "The Iskstar is not sufficient to defeat them."

  "They come for the Iskstar, just as the Kroerak," one of the elder Piscivoru said accusingly.

  "And the Iskstar rejected the Kroerak," I said, unwilling to let the conversation slide away from me.

  "Careful, Liam," Tabby warned. "You heard Jonathan, we don't know what it'll do to you."

  "Words!" the elder Piscivoru shot back just as quickly.

  Using my grav-suit, I pushed against the floor and hovered in the air. "You have failed to defeat the Kroerak because they ruined your technology and stripped the world above of your people. I have talked with Elder Tskir and she told me the history of your people. There was a time when the surface of Picis was covered with Piscivoru. You had technology that kept your people safe and you did not hide beneath a mountain, waiting for the day when the Kroerak would ferret you out."

  "You know nothing of our people," the elder answered. I was in a dangerous spot. I had no idea how many people supported him and I had no capacity to read their body language. All I could see was a lot of blinking and tongue flicking.

  "You speak the truth," I said. "But I do know the Kroerak. I have fought this enemy and will continue until I no longer draw breath. I'm not asking for something you do not want. I'm simply asking for you to join me and allow your Iskstar to fulfill its promise to your people."

  "What do you know of the Iskstar?" he asked, his tongue flicking.

  "I know the only thing I need – that it brings ruin to Kroerak," I said. "Noelisk, if you will promise to join us in our fight, I will take your test. To prove to you that I hide nothing. I will remove the final machine skin from my body. I say, let the Iskstar decide my fate, just as it has yours."

  "Ferisk, what say you?" Noelisk asked as I lowered to the ground and started peeling off my grav-suit.

  "I sense deception," the elder Ferisk said.

  "Your pores reek of fear," another female elder added.

  "As does this human," Ferisk answered, his tongue flicking out and touching my bare chest.

  "Liam, you're moving too quickly," Tabby said. "We need to think about this."

  I suppressed a laugh
. "Funny coming from you. Of course I'm scared. I have no idea what this Iskstar is going to do to me."

  "We agree, Liam," Jonathan added. "There are many possible dangers from this substance. The human body is quite fragile, not accepting of a wide temperature range nor swings in acidity or alkalinity. There could be many reasons this Iskstar is incompatible with human life. We should negotiate for a longer period."

  I'd stripped down to my shorts, then walked to the edge of the cliff and looked over. What I saw was as terrifying as it was beautiful. Fifty meters below sat the calm, glassy surface of a clear pool. A few meters below the surface of this water, bright glowing translucent crystalline structures spread out as far as the eye could see, forming tunnels and caverns deep into the ground.

  "You don't need to do this," Tabby said, stepping up next to me. "We can talk this out."

  "Talk isn't going to change anything. There's no way they'll trust us if the Iskstar is harmful. Just make sure to get me out if I start boiling or something." I flashed her a smile, knowing I'd overdone it a bit with the boiling comment.

  "Asshat," she said, hitting the back of my head. "And you're not jumping. It's too far. I'll take you down."

  "He should have no help," Ferisk said, overhearing Tabby.

  "Don't push it, snake boy," Tabby snapped as she wrapped her arms around me and lifted me off the cliff.

  Descending, I noticed one side of the cliff was dotted with small holes, many of which contained one or more small sets of eyes looking out at us. "How do the kids get in there?" I asked. As if in answer to my question a tiny Piscivoru exited one of the holes and skittered out onto the vertical surface, twisting around so it could watch us pass by.

  "You sure about this?" Tabby asked, stopping a few meters above the pool's surface.

  "Let's do it," I said.

  Tabby's hand slid down my back as I leaned over and dove toward the surface. It wasn't until I was fully submerged that I realized she'd grabbed my undershorts. I was now completely au natural. Pushing embarrassment aside, I surfaced and breast stroked until I was above a large blue crystal structure. Not used to swimming without my grav-suit, my lungs burned as I dove deeper and deeper, finally reaching the five-meter-tall crystal that was as wide as I was tall. The urgency of oxygen deprivation spurred me on and I reached out, wrapping my arms around the rock and pulling myself close to it.